CAMERON MILNER: Jim Chalmers’ economic roundtable has been well and truly Albanesed before it started

Jim Chalmers’ economic roundtable has well and truly been Albanesed even before its started.

What promised to be a dress rehearsal for Chalmers’ prime ministership has been assessed by the Albanistas as a threat and completely hobbled.

With sluggish economic growth and crumbling productivity, Australia more than ever, needs an honest conversation about where the nation is heading.

Elections are usually a good place, but the last two have been festivals of mediocrity, just the way the small target Anthony Albanese loves it.

No one went to the election with a GST, a Work Choices-style policy or an It’s Time themed mandate for shaking the place up and implementing large scale changes.

Kerry Packer always said you only get one Alan Bond in your life. Well the Prime Minister was blessed with two: first Scott Morrison and then Peter Dutton.

Ley isn’t any threat either, which is why Albo and his praetorian guard of Pals for Palestine are looking over their shoulders rather than across the chamber as to where the next challenge will arrive.

And the clearest alternative to Albanese is the very well credentialed Jim Chalmers.

One might be the elected leader of the Labor Party but it’s the other who is the head and heart of the Labor show.

Chalmers has a towering intellect, tempered by his lived experience from growing up in working class Logan, meaning he understands what families and workers need out of a Labor Government.

You don’t see Chalmers at Taylor Swift and Katy Perry concerts or splashing the cash on cliff top retirement homes. He’s measured while being ambitious for what Labor can achieve.

Albo might have grown up in public housing, but it says volumes that he has to keep reminding us of the fact rather than simply leading a Labor government.

That’s why as soon as the roundtable showed promise of being a launching pad for a Labor agenda, Albanese talked it down.

What was supposed to focus on productivity before being expanded to include economic reform was then watered down by the PM as an ideas fest with no timeline for implementation.

Albanese churlishly reminded Chalmers that it was Cabinet, not the roundtable, that would decide any future Labor agenda.

That’s because around the Cabinet table are the likes of Penny Wong, Tony Burke and Tim Ayres who are all more willing to go to the UN to back in Palestine than deliver productivity and economic reform at home.

Chalmers has had to echo the same hollow words of his leader. It’s loyalty to a fault, but a credit to his character. But it’s also a wasted opportunity.

Voters have already waited for more than three years for a Labor Government in Canberra.

The small target agenda was used to curtail ambition in the first term. Albanese was brought kicking and screaming to the realisation that Chalmers was right on stage three tax cuts for all.

Labor has had great reformers. Chifley delivered the Snowy Mountains scheme and maternity leave. Whitlam delivered Medicare, Hawke and Keating the Wages Accord and superannuation. Rudd said sorry.

As for Albanese: well we’re all still waiting, even after a full term in office.

Labor should be implementing a Labor agenda full of the best and brightest ideas from Chalmers’ roundtable, but Albo is keen to hose down any enthusiasm.

The next three days should be exactly like the National Economic Summit overseen by Hawke and Keating in 1983, but the PM has already announced the guard rails and talked down its significance.

The challenge for Labor is they are spending more than they are saving and the economy isn’t growing fast enough to keep up with the outgoings.

But in the famous words of Kevin Rudd “this reckless spending must stop”.

Labor’s last term in office was characterised by a cost-of-living crisis and a personal recession for every Australian.

The national accounts were kept afloat by a million new migrants that simply pump-primed demand and generated GDP.

Australians stuck in traffic, waiting to see a bulk billing doctor or in a never ending wait for housing know exactly what that additional migration did to our way of life.

That Chalmers is risking opening the Pandora’s box of taxing unrealised gains and shaking the foundations of superannuation in this country just to fund the spending speaks volumes.

There’s every chance those wealthy enough will simply work around the new super tax and, a lot like Wayne Swan’s mining tax, it will fail to raise anywhere close to what’s predicted.

Labor needs to reset the budget and economic narrative for Australia.

We need to take a leaf out of Chris Bowen’s folio of great revenue ideas and look maturely at changes to future capital gains concessions, negative gearing and the use of franking credits.

Labor used to be the party of fair reform, but under Albanese success is measured by the sun rising and setting the same day.

There’s a policy lethargy and laziness at the heart of the Albanese Government.

The quickness to feel threatened by Chalmers’ economic roundtable shows though just how thin-skinned the Albanistas really are. It shows how, despite the huge parliamentary majority, they are still impotent in office and that Albo is deeply paranoid.

The great opportunity the roundtable could’ve given Labor and the country may well be missed. We’ll have to wait for when Chalmers isn’t just Albanese’s Treasurer, but his successor.